Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Sadly, real-world events inspired this week’s topic: Lost historical treasures. Over the millennia places of incalculable worth to history have been lost to the sands of time, whether through deliberate destruction, carelessness or natural … Continue reading The Lost History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! It’s the anniversary of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the Nazi invasion of Denmark and Norway, and a variety of other historical events. I will declare this another open thread so feel free to discuss … Continue reading The History Thread Surrenders

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Discussion topic for this week: how much time do you invest in history? Do you work in a history-related field, or study it in school? Is it just a minor hobby or a lifelong … Continue reading The One-Eyed History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s picture: It’s Independence Day in Bangladesh, commemorating the beginning of their bloody struggle for freedom from Pakistan. When India and Pakistan were partitioned by the British, the latter was originally divided into West … Continue reading The Independent History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s picture: On March 19, 1853 forces of the Heavenly Kingdom of Peace seized the city of Nanjing, China and established it as the capital of their Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Their leader, Hong Xiuquan, … Continue reading The Heavenly History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Our subject this week will be explorers, exploration and their impact. I finally read Charles C. Mann’s 1493 after much prodding from this site’s users, and it seems like a good springboard to discuss … Continue reading The History Thread Explores (and Plots a Coup)!

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! I’ll leave the thread without a discussion question this week, discuss whatever you like. Today’s picture: on February 19, 1807 Aaron Burr, the former Vice President of the United States, was arrested on charges … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Stands Accused of Plotting to Create an Empire or Something

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Not going to select a subject this week, but today is the 210th birthday of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, two of the 19th Century’s most consequential figures. Continue reading The Weekly History Thread of Discovery

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today we’ll discuss controlling history, a topic both broad and specific. The presentation of history remains extremely contentious – witness the recent flap in Dearborn over Henry Ford – and there are numerous issues … Continue reading The [censored] Weekly History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today’s topic: important historical events that aren’t well known. This topic is inspired by today’s anniversary, the Battle of Đông Bộ Đầu in 1258, where a Vietnamese army led by Trần Thái Tông defeated the … Continue reading An Anti-Mongol History Thread

Here is this week’s History Thread. Post what you will, I’m not sure how much I’ll be contributing to. Continue reading The Last Second History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Our discussion question: How do you draw lessons/inspirations from history? Perhaps you’re a creative type who mines history for stories or artistic ideas, maybe you view an historical figure as an inspiration. Maybe reading … Continue reading The Inspired Weekly History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! This week, our discussion question: Favorite works of historical fiction. Favorite can mean a number of things, eg. just personal enjoyment, degree of accuracy, something that shapes your view of specific events or people, … Continue reading The Fictional History Thread

Welcome to the first History Thread of 2019! As usual we’ll do an open thread, though I’ll try and think of discussion questions for future ones. Please enjoy and post historical things. Today’s the sixtieth anniversary of Fidel Castro taking … Continue reading A New Year, a New History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! I’m going to take a break next week for Christmas (though I won’t object if someone else wants to throw something up). This week’s discussion question: History you’ve learned in 2018. It can be … Continue reading The Holiday History Thread!

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! As usual there won’t be a set discussion topic this week, though I might try and come up with new ones for future threads. Today’s picture: On December 11, 1917 British forces commanded by … Continue reading The Triumphant Weekly History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! The broader theme of this discussion is self-conscious archaism, the act of deliberately looking back to the past as a source of inspiration and emulating it in some way. This umbrella term also covers … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Appropriates the Past for Its Own Ends

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (both pictured above). Cleve Jones, Milk’s friend and ally, has a nice remembrance for … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread Remembers

Thanksgiving is a strange holiday. It nominally commemorates a celebratory harvest dinner hosted by the Massachusetts Puritans in the fall of 1621, to which local Native Americans were invited in a spirit of friendship and gratitude for their help surviving … Continue reading John Redcorn’s Thankstaking History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Our picture commemorates the 36th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial opening in Washington, DC. Designed by 21 year old architecture student Maya Lin, its simple design (a black wall listing the names of … Continue reading The Weekly History Thread

Welcome to this week’s History Thread! Today is the 80th anniversary of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast, which allegedly caused panic across the country from hayseeds who thought it signaled a real alien invasion (though modern historians … Continue reading The Panicked Weekly History Thread